Page 53 of Slow Burn
When I ended the call, Gabriele was still watching me with that intense stare of his.
‘What are you looking at?’ I said, laughing lightly.
‘Can I not look at you?’ he asked innocently.
‘No, you can’t,’ I said, scooting down the bed so that my whole body was covered with the duvet, feeling self-conscious suddenly.
‘I overheard your conversation.’
‘Hardly surprising when you’re lying right next to me,’ I said, jokingly tutting at him.
‘You need to connect more with your studio clients? Your members?’ he said, running his hand under the covers.
‘Mmmm,’ I said, suddenly completely unable to concentrate on what was happening with the studio because Gabriele’s hand had wormed its way into a position that felt achingly, devastatingly good. I pressed my hand on top of his, not wanting him to go anywhere.
‘Then I have an idea,’ he said mysteriously, rolling on top of me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENLira
While I stood self-consciously on stage, Gabriele had positioned himself in the front row of the theatre’s auditorium, which loomed dark and empty behind him. His phone was in his hand and it was pointing towards me. There was clearly an expectation that I was going to do something, but I’d drawn a massive blank as to what.
‘Social media really isn’t my thing,’ I whimpered pathetically, hoping that would go some way to explaining why I was currently frozen on stage like a rabbit in the headlights.
I’d been trying to get out of doing this for at least forty-five minutes, but it seemed to be having little effect – Gabriele was insistent.
‘You need to reconnect with your clients,si? You are away on this exciting dance journey. If they feel like you arethinking about them, that you are taking them with you, giving them behind-the-scenes access to something they would not usually get to see, then they will feel special.’
He had a point, even if he had surprised me with his insight. I hadn’t imagined he’d be a social media afficionado either, but when I checked out his Instagram – something I’d forced myself not to do up until that point – I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, there was indeed the odd gratuitously topless shot (and of course he looked amazing), but mostly it was videos of Gabriele breaking down a dance, teaching his thousands of followers a particular step, talking about the history of the rumba or whatever. His content was surprisingly engaging – he appeared very natural, even funny at times, and I wondered whether a career in TV presenting might beckon. Because of his usual glowering mood, or at least that’s what I’d call it, I’d never have imagined he’d come across so warmly on screen.
‘We don’t all have hidden talents, you know,’ I grumbled. ‘I’m not good on camera.’
‘I do not believe it. And anyway, how do you know if you have never even tried?’ he reasoned.
‘Let’s just say I’m hazarding a guess. Come on then, let’s get this over with,’ I said, positioning myself in the centre of the stage. ‘Is here okay?’
‘Hmmm,’ said Gabriele, twisting the camera first one way and then the other. ‘There is not much light in here, but it will have to do. So, a reminder – we will tease this on Instagram, but only your members will have access tothe full video via the James Jive newsletter. You will say something about where you are, why you are here, what kind of dances you are performing. You might want to mention me…’
‘Oh really? I might have guessed you’d want to get in on the act!’ I joked.
‘I will start recording on “action”,’ he said, smiling to himself.
I nodded in approval, feeling a shot of nerves. I wasn’t lying when I said I was terrible on camera. Sedi had been on at me for years to do more on the James Jive Instagram page. She even tried to persuade me to set up a TikTok account, but I’d drawn the line at that. She currently had twenty-five thousand followers on there, apparently, which sounded impressive, but in the case of the studio, I didn’t think the majority of our clientele would even be on TikTok, since it was mostly made up of couples in their thirties, busy mums and senior citizens. I thought I had a better chance with Instagram, and I posted the odd thing – perhaps if we had a new teacher, or a new class, or photos from one of our events. But I’d always made sure that I didn’t appear in any of the shots, even if Sedi had tried to persuade me that I was the ‘face of James Jive’. I’d called her bluff and said that she should shoot some footage at the studio for herself, put it out there to her thousands of TikTok followers, and she’d half-heartedly agreed, but to date it had never happened and I knew better than to bother pushing it.
‘And… action!’ yelled Gabriele.
I looked at the camera, which I could barely see because of the darkness and the fact it was a tiny, black, slimline phone, but even so, looking at a piece of tech equipment was definitely preferable to looking into Gabriele’s eyes, which were altogether distracting, so I went with it.
‘Hello, everyone. It’s me, Lira, from James Jive. I hope you’re all well and I’m so sorry I haven’t been around for the last few weeks. As some of you may have heard, I had the opportunity to join a new dance show calledSlow Burn. We started the run in the West End and now I’m in Spain, would you believe? Here I am at theTeatre Apoloin Barcelona. It’s four hours before showtime and my dance partner, Gabriele Riccitelli, and I have arrived early to run through the four duets we have in the show. We thought it might be fun to take you along with us…’
I smiled at what I thought was the camera and waited for Gabriele to stop recording.
‘And… cut!’ he said.
He put his phone down and looked at me with suspicion.
‘I thought you said you were not good on camera?’
I walked closer to the edge of the stage. ‘Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, once I got going. I just pictured my clients and imagined chatting to them at home in the studio. It took the pressure off.’
